"The president reached out to and spoke with each of these business leaders as a part of his continuing conversations and outreach on the need to find a balanced deficit-reduction solution that protects the middle class and continues to move our economy forward," the White House official said.

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It's not particularly surprising that Obama reached out to Cook -- Apple has been one of the most valuable companies in the world for a while now -- but it does show how important Apple has become in recent years.

Note: Due to the inevitable political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

I am a fan of Apple and love their products. However, I am more concerned about the well being of the average person. Please don't sell out the middle class to these oligarchs by taking away programs people have worked hard for their entire lives. All these CEOs want is more money for themselves and their executive teams at the price of the 99%.

I wonder if capping pay of executives across the board of all US companies would spur more reinvestment in companies hopefully leading to more jobs or if it's better to let the executives make as much as they want and then just tax them heavily for it. The executives could though end up like Buffett and just live off of dividends and get taxed at a lower rate. I guess we should raise taxes on dividends over a certain amount then so no one could theoretically escape then?

Im Canadian but it makes me mad when companies look for loopholes to avoid taxes.
I dont like to pay taxes either but I do because its the right thing to do. America would be so much better off if there wasnt so many rich people trying to avoid taxes.

Jamie Dimon??? To discuss the state of the economy? Many o fthese people are the very ones who broke the economy in the first place. Hopefully he is having this discussion in order to do the opposite of what they suggest (though the hope of that is faint).

I never said I supported Mitt. Please don't put words in my mouth. I'm a libertarian.

That said, Romney would have run the country more like a business instead of a humanitarian society, which is what needs to happen. This made him the better option. He wasn't the optimal candidate, but I think he understood that the government is too big, and doesn't do a good job at running things.

We're on the highway to Greece people. The government isn't the answer. They're the cause.

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